Here is some of the coolest art we saw during Miami Art Week
FAENA HOTEL BEACH
In “Library of Us,” Es Devlin pays homage to the magic of books with a manmade pond anchored by a 50-foot-high triangular bookcase that doubles as a sundial. Quotes displayed on a digital strip along the facade are read aloud, recalling stories that plumb the depths of human meaning. Surrounding it all is a reading table where visitors can peruse some of the artist’s favorite volumes.
On the sand at 3201 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH
Beeple’s “Regular Animals” featuring famous-faced robots (including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are definitely the show-stealer of the new Zero 10 sector at Art Basel. (The “animals” snap Polaroids that then poop out.) But there’s more to discover in this platform for tech-enabled artworks. James Turrell’s installations, usually set in museum spaces, include two walk-through works designed to bend perception between space and light. At Jack Butcher’s “Self Checkout,” 2025, artgoers pay what they like in exchange for an NFT and receipt whose length is determined by the amount paid. Maya Man’s “Girl With the Red Shoes” plays on greed and capitalism as it layers images and text from a teen resale clothing platform in reference to the Danish fable about the girl whose vanity lands her in a perpetual dance in her beloved red shoes.
Zero 10 sector, southwest corner of the exhibition hall at Miami Beach Convention Center, 1900 Convention Center Drive, Miami Beach. The fair runs through Dec. 7.
The aptly named – if not grammatically correct – “Big Foots” inflatable sculpture by 78-year-old guerilla artist Pat Oleszko took over much of the David Peter Francis gallery. The 13-foot-tall legs sport yellow-and-black striped stockings and pointy red boots and are listed for $60,000, evoking fairy tales of old. Just five years ago they were slated for the rubbish pile, only Oleszko was too lazy to call someone to dispose of them. Sometimes it pays to be lethargic.
Booth S17, Miami Beach Convention Center
British artist Yinka Shinobare explores cultural identity and colonialism through his painstakingly elaborate use of brightly colored wax print fabric made in West Africa. “British Library Collections” comprises three large bookcases of volumes covered in his signature fabric.
Stephen Friedman Gallery, D15
UNTITLED
Camilo Restrepo grew up in Medellin, Colombia, in the 1980s, during the sinister heyday of drug lord Pablo Escobar, whose personal zoo included vicious hippos. Restropo marks the darkness of those times with a massive, complex cartoon depicting a cigar-smoking drug lord and carnivorous hippos in a bright, fantastical jungle. This is no joke; the $38,000 work is drawn on a series of moleskins that, folded together, creates a pallet the size of a brick of cocaine.
La Cometa gallery, booth C-12, UNTITLED Art Fair.
Women often totter along a delicate line between beauty and torture, femininity and the bondage of expectation. Artist Larissa Camnev explores this tension in an eye-catching $38,000 work incorporating a vintage corset with champagne glasses as breasts. Many women will relate.
Bianca Bockel Booth N12, UNTITLED Art Fair
BLACK ART
Works by Black and brown artists are integral to nearly all the fairs this year. A few standouts:
At Art Basel, Jack Shainman’s gallery offers works by many of modern art’s most lauded Black artists, including a sculptural weaving by Ghanian El-Anatsui, one of Nick Cave’s alien-esque soundsuits, a Gordon Park photo, a Faith Ringgold painting and a canvas by Nina Chanel Abney.
Through Dec. 7, Art Basel Miami Beach, Booth H23
Decades after his death from a drug overdose, Jean-Michel Basquiat still holds the art world in thrall. Fans can see original photos of Basquiat shot by his one-time roommate, Alexis Adler, recently acquired by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The 5x7 black-and-white photos are set in the context of 18 contemporary Black artists including Romare Bearden, David Driskell, Sophia Viktor, Lex Marie and Rorisang Monanabela, all part of a show by Brooklyn’s Bishop Gallery on the fourth floor of Moore Building.
Through Dec. 30 at The Moore, 4040 NE Second Ave., Miami Design District.
One of the jaw droppers at the UNTITLED Fair are April Bey’s Colonial Swag tapestries at the TERN booth depicting sassy schoolgirls in futuristic uniforms emblazoned with the words “Colonial Swag.” As a girl, the artist’s Trekkie father helped his daughter overcome her outsider status as a heavyset mixed race girl, casting her as the heroine of a fantasy world called “Atlantica.” The glittery 8-by-4-foot tapestry, priced at $30,000, is part of a series that reimagines schools and education.
Booth B3, UNTITLED, 12th Street and Ocean Drive, Miami Beach.
Fans of portraiture will want to check out Scope, where galleries are presenting a variety of works by Black artists from the U.S. and Africa. Among those worth checking out are quilts by Desmond Beach at Richard Beavers gallery, works on paper by Johnson Mugabe at Spiralis Gallery and canvases by Ayanda Mabulu at Melrose Gallery.
Scope Art Fair, Eighth Street and Ocean Drive.